"I had a friend once who did things like that," he answered.

"I'll tell you about him sometime; I'll tell you a lot of things you should know about me. But not tonight. Your dad's right. Wash your face and go to bed. Sleep on it. I'll see you tomorrow, and see how you feel."

She peered at him for a moment, seeing he didn't know what. Then, standing on tiptoes and holding his face in her hands, she did kiss him, gently. He left in a daze.

Back in his rented room, Macurdy again gave shamanic attention to his damaged face, then went to bed, where he reviewed the evening in his mind. He knew he'd ask Mary to marry him, probably soon, and he knew she'd say yes. It seemed strange but inevitable.

Mary lay looking at a shaft of moonlight through her window. If her mother hadn't had that cancer in her brain, she told herself, she wouldn't have gotten so mad about the dish. Wouldn't have hit her so hard and said those terrible things. Poor aiti! It must have been an awful death.

And if it hadn't been for Curtis and his questions, she'd never have remembered, never have known what festered in the back of her mind, hidden by her sense of childish guilt.

What kind of man was Curtis Macurdy? She'd find out, she told herself. Because she knew he'd ask her to marry him. And she would. She would. Perhaps he'd ask her after the movie. Perhaps in a week or a month. She would not, she resolved, disappoint him, with her answer or her love.

7

Disclosures. Proposals. Advices.

By Monday morning, Macurdy's efforts with shamanism, massage, and hot washcloths had reduced the discoloration to a faint greenish yellow, a remarkable accomplishment. He arrived at the courthouse a few minutes before eight. Fritzi was already there, as usual, and Macurdy peered into his office. "Excuse me, sheriff," he said, "can I talk with you a minute?"

"Go ahead."

"I wonder if I could have a day shift today."

"That's what I planned for you. This morning you go to the courthouse and read some court proceedings. I have written a list."

"You were along when Earl arrested Arne Peterson, and he showed you how to do the paperwork. The trial is this afternoon, and Earl will be there as arresting officer. I want you there too. You got to have experience with these things."

He paused, eyeing Macurdy. "Now. Why did you want the day shift today?"

"I want the evening off, to take Mary to the movie. There's things I need to tell her about me, the sooner the better." Fritzi nodded worriedly. "Macurdy," he said, "I like what I know about you, but I don't know very much. I don't know what happened last night, only that it seemed to end all right. But I love my daughter more than my life. Don't hurt her." Instead of answering, Macurdy reached across the desk and shook the sheriff's left hand. "Now," he said, "I'm ready for that list."

The movie was a western, The Last Roundup, starring Randolph Scott. They ate popcorn, and when the popcorn was gone, they held hands.

Afterward they strolled Nehtaka's tree-lined residential streets. In jackets; September had brought offshore breezes, and the evening was cool and humid. For the first fifteen minutes they hardly spoke at all, but Macurdy's mood was pregnant with things needing to be said. He'd lost totally the confidence he'd felt Saturday night.

Finally he broke the silence. "How old do you think I am?"

"I don't know. Twenty-five?"

"Twenty-eight."

"That's not old."

"Old enough to have been married. Twice."

There was a long moment's silence before Mary responded: "Tell me about it."

"My first wife's name was Varia. She'd always seemed kind of strange, but we were in love. We were married about six weeks when her family sent people to kidnap her, and I followed them. Out of the country. By the time I found her, she was married to someone else."

"But-that was bigamy! Couldn't you get her back?"

"Not under their laws. And her new husband was an important man. Later I married a girl there named-it translates to Melody-and I got a farm. But a few months later she drowned."

Her hand on his arm, Mary stopped him, looking earnestly into his eyes. "Those things were no fault of yours. Were they?"

"Not so far as I know. But that's just part of what I've got to tell. The easy part. I'm afraid you'll think I'm crazy when I tell you the rest of it, but it wouldn't be honest if I didn't."

When he said nothing more, she turned, and they began walking slowly again, still holding hands. "I have a secret, too," she said. "Not like the one I told you on Saturday, that I'd hidden from myself all those years. It's one that goes on every day of my life, and I've only ever told one person."

He didn't ask, but let her continue in her own time. "You've seen pictures of Jesus and Mary, with haloes around their heads."

"Yeah."

"I see haloes. Everyone has one, and not just around their heads. They're brightest there, but when I take the trouble to, I can see them around their whole body." She peered at him earnestly. "Does that sound crazy?"

This time it was Curtis who stopped. "You see them? I do too! Varia called them auras." He paused, his features vague in the darkness, but to Mary's eyes his aura had expanded: pastels of red, gold, violet-a kind of personal aurora. "That makes it easier for me," he said. "Easier to tell you what I need to."

They walked again, one street after another, Macurdy talking at length. He told her more about Varia, who'd married his Uncle Will when Curtis was four years old. Varia had seemed about twenty. Twenty years later, when Will was killed felling timber, she still looked twenty. Then she'd married Curtis.

The story grew stranger, Macurdy's voice becoming monotone as he told it, as if he'd lost hope again that Mary could possibly believe. Varia had come from another world, he said, then repeated it another world, named Yuulith, with gates that from time to time opened into this one. In Yuulith she'd belonged to a Sisterhood that was like a tribe. Its women used magic-nothing all that amazing, but useful-and stayed physically young for nearly a century, then rapidly grew old, and died in just a few years. They had men in the tribe for breeding and soldiering, but the head Sister was the boss, like a queen. What she said was. law.

A month later, when the gate had opened again, he'd gone to find Varia, and on the other side been made a slave by a tribe there, then a shaman's apprentice, then a soldier. Had been in a war, and found Varia, only to discover she'd remarried. Then he'd married and lost Melody, and returned home again.

They'd stopped on a low bluff overlooking the sparsely lit town, the Pacific stretching in the distance to a horizon seen only by inference, where the stars ended, the blackness becoming sea instead of sky. "And now," he finished, "you probably think I'm either crazy or the world's biggest liar."

She took both his hands. -Curtis," she said quietly, "I'm not even going to think about it. I'm lad you told me, but the smartest thing for me to do is juste me and let you be you, and see how things develop.

"I see haloes, or auras, and most people, if I told them, would think I was crazy or lying. Of course, another world, with gates to this one, sounds quite a lot stranger than that, and I might never quite believe in it. But I'll get used to the idea, and that's more important."

"I can generally tell when people are lying, by their haloes, and you're not. And you don't have bad intentions, either; I can tell that too."

"As for magical powers-what you did last night was magical enough for me, and that happened! It was real!"

She moved closer to him. "I want you to take me home now. But first I want you to kiss me, because I'm in love with you." The kiss was soft and lingering, then they turned back down the hill, saying almost nothing at all until they reached her block, when Macurdy could delay no longer. "There's something I didn't tell you. Something more important."